Monthly Archives: October 2013

After watching this video and gravity acting on such a micro level, I couldn’t help but wonder how the force of gravitational attraction is a lot like how dipoles behave with unlike charges. I wondered how much of what was going on in the inflated bags of sugar, at this small size, had to do with special relativity and the warping of space-time for each grain, or quantum physics and the weak nuclear force acting on an atomic level.

After witnessing a house fire in my neighborhood, I started thinking about how to improve fire response systems. What follows is an idea I have to use some of the technology found in drones we use to take lives, into features that can help save them.

Fire in a home or building can cause property damage and death. Fire response is dependent on available resources on the scene, including fire extinguishers and arriving fire response teams. Large buildings and businesses are outfitted with custom installed sprinkler systems. These are by far the most effective but require expensive installation, mostly at the time the building is being constructed.

Most homes and structures do not have sprinkler systems. Fire extinguishers can be heavy and hard to use by some individuals without training. Others may not have access or be able to lift or operate some models. Absent a sprinkler system, fast response is required. This includes someone conscious and armed with a method to stop the fire. Without effective fire response, seconds and minutes can mean life or death.

What is needed is a small, compact system that anyone can own to protect a given area automatically. An autonomous sentry unit that can monitor and protect a given size room and actively monitor conditions, instantly responding when fire is detected. Automatic delivery of extinguishing agent in line of sight up to specified distance will be applied in the event of detected combustion.

Using sensors including thermal and chemical, both fire and smoke can be detected. The system will be smart enough to tell the difference between useful combustion (stoves, matches and cigarettes) and hazards, reporting all emergency events via text message alerting owners by mobile device and email. Local response authorities are also contacted automatically.

Onboard environment systems will allow the property owner a view into the protected area via HD camera and video telephony connection. Owners can monitor their property remotely as the unit is actively extinguishing the fire in real-time. Backup power lasts for 15 mins after power has been lost at the installation property. A recording is created in every case of fire response for later viewing by property owner and transfer to any storage device via SD card.

Onboard microphones are able to pick up any individuals in distress and relay this via text alert and Skype connection using victim detection algorithm which can parse distress and human voices. This information is included when contacting authorities.

Commercial applications include business and home markets. The Smart Fire Safety Drone (SFSD) can be constructed to fit target audiences.

Baby Nursery

Protect newborns from threat of fire or smoke with a SFSD using age appropriate exterior. A stuffed elephant may be a good design when installed in a nursery. Many millions of parents already rely on electronic devices in aiding the care of their children. SFSD can include baby monitoring via mobile phone or tablet devices. Like other products marketed for the baby nursery (Diaper Genie), a Smart Fire Sentry Drone Nursery edition could become a staple part of any modern American baby nursery.

Some other examples include:

Live animal proprietors who care for livestock within indoor environments. Pet stores and Kennels.

Firework corporations who travel with explosives and store them offsite during customer display installations.

Home garages.

Any situation where fire is a constant threat and or extremely destructive in the event of combustion.

Any successor to the 360 should have been a huge home run, a cake walk for Microsoft.

Provide better hardware, cleaner look, improved controllers and overall gaming fidelity. Paint it black and give it a slick name before the holidays. Sit back and watch the $$ flow.

They focused on features for the Kinect no one asked for, without any real improvement in game play. This makes me very suspicious about the true origins of these requirements.

Where is the flagship killer Kinect game that uses my heartbeat and emotions?

If those features where so central to gaming, why are they not a part of the launch by being included in a major game release? Unless these details are still to come, I would say this is misplaced requirements for a system that should be more focused on immersion vs behavior monitoring.

Having my real pulse shown in my Battlefield 4 screen or the game environment respond to my emotion could be cool, but unless the gamer and owner of the console are in full control of these features, comprehensive control like the V-Chip in most TVs, they can appear insidious. Think about it for a minute. High resolution sensor, one that is connected to the Internet and in my home focused on my family. What if they are hacked? What if Microsoft introduces new features in the future I want to shut off and can’t?

This much access to millions of American homes requires a level of class, trust and respect to execute correctly. Not a caviler “use a 360 for offline play”, directly attacking the customer and then after the resulting uproar, back-peddling and promises.

The Always on feature and forced bundle of Kinect really drive the bad sentiment home. I am paying a lot of money for something I own. $100 more than the PS4. Why can’t I use it how I want? In an age of losing privacy, why demand this is part of the experience when very few if any use the Kinect today?

It is as if, someone in the marketing department ignored any actual information about what gamers want and said,

“Let’s take the user action tracking of the browser and bring it into the living room. Instead of mouse clicks and page views, it will be family eye views, emotion and pulse reporting while TV content is on screen. Advertisers and Brands will be interested to know what people are doing and feeling when they are watching their content. Xbox One has to be Always on, always watching, and connected to the internet, even when watching TV. Make them all mandatory for use with our new services, if they don’t like that tell them to use a 360.”

This is just wild speculation of course, but even still, given the feature set and the bad handling of PR during the announcement left me with little trust they care about the gamer. Metrics like these are a goldmine for a marketing director and something no one else in the market is close to providing. A monopoly they can sell access to reports by the truck-ton.

I argue in a world increasingly moving to digital content, where historical sales metrics are fuzzy, they can give the Nelson Family some competition. Even track Netflix and other services like Youtube views. I could understand Microsoft focused more on future Facebook-like revenue streams by selling access to monitored likes, the user just has to become excited while watching content with Xbox One to like something, instead of clicking a thumb icon.

As of March 31, 2013, 77.2 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold worldwide, Microsoft was thinking large for the Xbox One. The big picture here is a system in millions of living rooms that can record viewer emotions and possibly aggregate this with TV content at time of recording. This gives Microsoft a way to provide detailed reports about viewership emotions by the second.

Imagine telling an advertising brand you can sell them heart beat charts and mood of tens of millions of viewers, superimposed over their commercial video keyframes. Know what the viewer is feeling during each second their content is onscreen.

The Kinect is a fantastic platform with real potential for new experiences, only if you use it the right way by keeping user privacy as a priority. People stare at their iPhones all day while their cameras are on, GPS tracks their every move and yet they wait in line to buy them. It is all about how a feature is implemented, the message from the company and what control the end user has.